There is so much to write about but I’ll begin with Microsoft buying Skype for $8.5 billion. The pundits are debating whether this move by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer makes good business sense, but that’s the wrong way to look at it. The better approach is to wonder what would have happened had Microsoft not bought Skype? Based on the high price alone I’m fairly confident that Ballmer felt he had no choice but to buy. In fact I’m fairly certain he felt that not buying could have doomed Microsoft.

Remember eBay bought Skype a few years ago for $2.6 billion, failed to make a go of it, then took a big write-off and sold much of the rest of the company to private equity firms. Skype was changing hands at a discount to the old eBay price only a year ago, so what had changed so remarkably to make Skype suddenly worth more than three times as much? Nothing had changed operationally. In terms of pure financial performance Skype isn’t worth anything like $8.5 billion. But the corporate chess board has changed quite a bit in the last couple years so it is possible to see where this acquisition might make strategic sense to Microsoft.

Ballmer and his company are at a tipping-point and he knows it. Microsoft is still big and powerful and rich, but no longer is it the biggest, most powerful, and richest. It is no coincidence that Department of Justice oversight of Microsoft’s anti-trust consent decree ended this week, because Redmond is nowhere near the threat to competitors that it used to be. The company can go from here either up or down and Ballmer’s fear is that the direction will be down, down, down. Microsoft will still make plenty of money but that might be from milking declining markets.

Ballmer needs a new market to milk.

Maybe that new market is telecom. Here is where I might write a paragraph about the Microsoft vision of unified communication where they’ll suck market share and market cap from the old telcos. That’s happening already and if someone is going to benefit, why not Microsoft? But I’m not writing that paragraph because I don’t think Ballmer or Microsoft are actually that smart. They have lost confidence. Microsoft no longer believes it controls or even can control the game. Worse still, they don’t have confidence that they even know the rules. So they’ve adopted a defensive posture and this Skype acquisition is more of a block than anything else.

Microsoft bought Skype to keep Google from buying Skype.

Notice I didn’t mention Apple. In terms of being the baddest MoFo in the market Apple has no peer, but Apple is following its own very different course. Apple isn’t the next Microsoft, you see. Apple is not the next anything because the role it aspires to transcends anything imaginable by Microsoft, ever. Google is the next Microsoft, so Google is seen by Ballmer as the immediate threat — the one he has a hope in hell of actually doing something about.

In the end Apple will probably beat both Google and Microsoft, but that’s not a story for today.

Were Google to buy Skype they’d convert those 663 million Skype subscriptions to Google Voice and Gmail and in a swoop make parts of Yahoo and MSN irrelevant. They’d build a brilliant Skype client right into the DNA of Android, draining telco revenue and maybe killing smaller players like Windows Phone. They’d cut deals with equipment makers like Cisco (Linksys) and NetGear and steal voice revenue from telcos and cable companies alike. That’s all Redmondesque behavior and if anyone is going to be behaving that way, Ballmer feels, it had darned well better be Redmond.

If Microsoft is to continue to grow and have an existence post-PC it has to be first or second in the mobile market, Ballmer knows that. Buying Skype doesn’t guarantee Microsoft that success, but NOT buying Skype would have practically guaranteed Microsoft’s failure.

And the $8.5 billion price? That was effectively set by Google, not Microsoft. Ballmer would have paid anything for Skype. $8.5 billion is just the price at which Google feels it is better for them to build rather than buy.

So look for heavy activity in this space as Microsoft assimilates and Google constructs. More acquisitions will come for both companies along with any number of strategic realignments. But remember that neither is actually in control. The conclusion is not only far from certain, there’s still a chance that neither company will dominate.

203 Comments

Jeff J
May 12, 2011 at 8:26 am

I can’t wait to hear what Apple will do since my house is exclusively Apple products (lots of them). Will Skype continue to work on Apple hardware? I use Skype a lot so I’m actually concerned about that.

Thinking
May 12, 2011 at 12:17 pm

I am your intellectual opposite, having never purchased an Apple product. I can count the number of times I’ve USED Apple products on one hand. Of course I’m relatively tech savvy. Currently I have three computers, a printer and a humongus plotter setup and make do with mostly open-source software. My infatuation with Linux is on hold after 11 tumultuous years and despite my love affair with Windows XP, I have a new mistress, Windows 7 and have moved on. *sob*

The question is whether Apple pulls a webkit on FaceTime so that Google and Apple pull the rug from under Skype. Meanwhile, I doubt the telcos will sit idly buy and watch their golden geese be plucked by these three companies.

Thinking
May 12, 2011 at 3:45 pm

No no. You missed the mark by a wide margin. It’s just a quirk of fate that I missed using any Apple products. Around the time the Macintosh came out I was into AutoCad on a Compaq 286 Portable. Then it was AutoCad systems on PC hardware with Nth Engine and Number Nine graphics so I missed the early heady days of Apple’s success. In the engineering computer environment using Apple never became an issue.

As far as phones are considered I’ve never owned a cellphone.

OnPurpose
May 13, 2011 at 9:34 am

I have purposely never purchased ANY apple products and can count the number of times I’ve used them with all the fingers on my right foot… The inflated prices, brow beating attitude and lemming following I find nauseous.

don k punch
May 14, 2011 at 9:25 pm

I believe the word you were looking for is “implies”, rather than “infers”.

dfs
May 14, 2011 at 9:40 am

“of course I’m relatively tech savvy”.

Wow, I switched to OSX from linux/freeBSD ~10 years ago because I could do everything from run development web servers and development environments, as well as run MS office, photoshop and everything else I needed from one laptop.

It shows ignorance to assume that people who choose apple are *not* technical.

PaulG
May 13, 2011 at 8:18 am

Why would MS nix the Mac Skype client? No they won’t do that. They do make several highly rated Mac applications, after all. They will hopefully improve the pathetic attempt from Skype to redo and make 5.x skype Mac like. All they really did was make it a train wreck.

It is in Microsofts best interest to put it into as many users as possible, so they will continue to make Mac software updates.

dfs
May 14, 2011 at 9:43 am

I doubt microsoft would eliminate the skype client for OSX. They get hundreds of millions of dollars annually from Apple users who purchase MS software.

Ben
May 12, 2011 at 8:42 am

Steve Ballmer. The Edsel Ford of Microsoft.

Steveorevo
May 12, 2011 at 8:49 pm

Could not agree more. Skype is in line with many Microsoft acquisitions. Like Caligari.com. Remember when Microsoft just use to screw companies over by assimilating their technology and not pay for it (Sybase anyone)? Back then they would at least release the ‘acquired’ technology in a semi successful product (MS-SQL Server) to kill the competitor. My how times have changed! Like Caligari.com, no replacement or killer product will come about or dominate. Instead, it will just die. At least the former owners got a nice fat check. I just left Skype, as Viber, Google Voice and tons of easier, seamless options (and free) just make a whole lot more sense. Telephones are going the way of overpriced text messaging. The *only* thing going for it is convenience. And with apps like Facetime, and WhatsApp?… even that is dying quickly. As cheaper compatible products hit the market, the crappy Lo-Fi voice communication we call the ‘telephone’ is going bye bye. Seriously, who talks on the phone as much as they XMPP/Viber/WhatsApp/text/IM/Factime or just plain EMAIL?

Ben
May 13, 2011 at 7:54 am

It always really annoyed me the way they treated Sybase. I used to be a bit on an expert on Sybase and I had basically memorized most of the transact SQL functions.

I remember reading that Microsoft and Sybase had gone into some kind of partnership (to integrate Sybase part of Windows or something). Presumably this gave Microsoft access to the Sybase source code in order to port it to run on Windows.

Surprise, surprise, a few months later there was a disagreement and the partnership ended. Then about a year later Microsoft came out with “Microsoft SQL server”. I remember looking at the transact SQL functions. They were basically identical ! They hadn’t even attempted to hide the fact they had ripped off the code.

I remember thinking that Sybase should sue the hell out of them but it never really happened and Sybase just slowly died. I still have a Sybase coffee mug on my desk with that fibonnaci log on it. Poor Sybase.

Thanks, that was an interesting read. The following paragraph does provide an explanation as to why the transact SQL functions were the same.

“Microsoft SQL Server version 4.2 shipped in March 1992. The reviews were good and customer feedback
was positive. As it turned out, the source code for the database engine in this version was the last code that
Microsoft received from Sybase (except for a few bug fixes exchanged from time to time).”

Haniel
May 12, 2011 at 8:45 am

“Times are lean and mean, and Microsoft is just meaner than its competitors. Microsoft is meaner than anyone.” Bob, July 5, 2001

“In terms of being the baddest MoFo in the market Apple has no peer” Bob, May 12, 2011

I wonder who will wear the crown in 2021?

NoTalentHack
May 12, 2011 at 9:09 am

Julian Assange

Thinking
May 12, 2011 at 12:27 pm

Could thatl be “Sir” Julian Assange soon?

Cris E
May 13, 2011 at 7:03 am

It’s funny, but it depends on the next emerging caped superhero CEO. Gates retired and Balmer was not up to filling those shoes. Jobs has Apple on a tear, but the man is sick and I haven’t got any sense of a succession plan, much less one that has a hope of carrying the momentum more than a few hours past Steve’s passing. Where’s the next Gates or Jobs with the ferocity to reach the top of the mountain?

Hamranhansenhansen
May 15, 2011 at 10:44 pm

Whoever replaces Jobs, they will have a fairly easy time of it, because they will have a technology portfolio that is 10 years ahead of everyone else and the best user base on the planet.

A Different Scott
May 12, 2011 at 9:04 am

If Google had bought Skype, I wonder if they would have made it better or ruined it by trying to work it into the DNA of Android….

A Different Scott
May 12, 2011 at 9:05 am

And if Google build its own Skype what will they call it? GSkype?

Stephen Johnson
May 12, 2011 at 5:03 pm

It would be skoogle!

Tony E
May 12, 2011 at 7:59 pm

Goope?

Tim
May 13, 2011 at 3:10 am

Surely they have had their own Skype for a little while now?
Google Talk does text, voice and video over IP.
Honeycomb tablets are capable of that right now.
Android phones with front-facing cameras are getting the update to video shortly.
You can use a desktop plugin for GMail to do the same.

I suppose there would be value in adopting the Skype subscriber base, but they can switch to all of the above for free anyway.

JR
May 13, 2011 at 6:44 am

They would have called it Google Voice. In every important way, Google already has everything Skype offers in GV or could easily include it.

Google is integrating GV into Android. MS will integrate Skype into WinPhone. Both will result in a loss to carriers for long distance, airtime, SMS and MMS, as users can use their data/wifi to access these functions instead of using their expensive carrier voice plans. In most cases they will still need an always on data connection, so cellular, but those will become more and more dumb pipes.

Where is Apple in this game? Either they don’t think it matters or they have their own plans. It’ll be interesting to see either way.

Scott
May 12, 2011 at 9:13 am

Business Sense? Microsoft? I’m not sure those two words belong in the same sentence together, much less in the same language. Almost nothing they’ve done has made business sense since 1995.

The only institution that’s been coasting on previous accomplishments longer than Microsoft is Harvard.

Thinking
May 16, 2011 at 4:28 am

This acquisition could make business sense which may become evident in the future. After some thought the idea occurs to me that the Skype acquisition could be solely about patents. Is MS running out the guns in preparation for a legal broadside?

[…] to my RSS feed (using BlogBridge, of course) . Welcome, and thanks for visiting!Check this post Why Microsoft bought Skype from I, Cringely: There is so much to write about but I’ll begin with Microsoft buying Skype for […]

Mike Saint Louis
May 12, 2011 at 9:28 am

I think it’s becoming extremely obvious that MS will not get anywhere with Ballmer calling the shots. MS needs to find a CEO that will take the company into the future instead of just coasting on Windows, Office and Xbox forever.

I wonder if internally they are trying to find someone else to lead them? Who could actually do it? In any case, Ballmer is clearly not the man for the job. He should step down and join the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Jim
May 12, 2011 at 1:09 pm

Heck no – the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation actually does good deeds (where is the Steve Jobs Foundation?). ‘Kin Ballmer would surely find a way to screw it up (developing world, developing world, developing world!).

Microsoft will continue to print money for some years yet, even if the company employees sat around blowing soap bubbles. The shareholders are happy and take the company profits for granted. They’ve not rebelled over a remarkable series of face-palms and think that Kinect and Windows 8 signal yet further success. Mr. Ballmer gives them what they want and it won’t be until the iceberg has actually ripped an unholy gash in the side of S.S. Microsoft that anything radical will be done (the only thing radical about buying Skype is the price). He’s got a safe job as captain of the ship.

Bob, Google said they weren’t interested in Skype, because it didn’t fit the architecture (Wired interview: http://bit.ly/jzAqXw) If Microsoft couldn’t get wind of Google abandoning a purchase effort in Skype, then Microsoft really is stupid, right? When you are laying out that kind of money, shouldn’t you be able to sniff out whether something like this had happened?

I personally think this is going to go down as a bust, bigger than the AOL/TimeWarner bust. There is nothing unique about Skype that can’t be duplicated somewhere else, with a probably more robust architecture. Skype’s peer to peer architecture is “so last century”.

Matt
May 12, 2011 at 10:10 am

Quoting jobo: “Bob, Google said they weren’t interested in Skype, because it didn’t fit the architecture (Wired interview: http://bit.ly/jzAqXw) If Microsoft couldn’t get wind of Google abandoning a purchase effort in Skype, then Microsoft really is stupid, right? When you are laying out that kind of money, shouldn’t you be able to sniff out whether something like this had happened?”

Perhaps they’re not interested in the technology, but surely they’re interested in keeping it out of Microsoft’s hands, at least at a discount price.

In any industry, it wouldn’t be the first time Company A bought Company X only to keep Company B from buying it.

Brandon
May 12, 2011 at 12:38 pm

… Or (again, strategically), Google isn’t interested in keeping Skype out of MS’s hands, but is interested in seeing MS sink a massive amount of money into it all the same. After all, the money is one way to bloody MS’s nose, and then given the massive expenditure, MS will be married to the idea of making it work.

jck
May 12, 2011 at 9:52 am

This is not an end-game, not yet

I’d like to think it is. And to me, it is

jck
May 12, 2011 at 9:53 am

In the end Apple will probably beat both Google and Microsoft, but that’s not a story for today.

No way – well maybe in the consumer market.

Tim
May 13, 2011 at 3:23 am

I agree… it’s often predicted that the next billion people coming online will be through mobile in the developing world; a market where Apple prices belong in fantasy land. Any forecasts of their “dominance” have to be carefully framed.

God of Biscuits
May 14, 2011 at 2:59 pm

Look up the word “canard”.

This “Apple premium” fallacy. Has gone on too long.

You DO know that just by relating a thing it doesn’t make it more true, right?

Matt
May 12, 2011 at 10:05 am

I wonder what will happen to Skype on non-Microsoft platforms?

Jim
May 12, 2011 at 1:34 pm

Nothing. Microsoft is happy to cater to whatever platform you prefer as long as it is profitable for them (Office, Bing, Exchange, etc.).

TemporalBeing
May 12, 2011 at 10:32 am

Well, while you have some good points about why they bought Skype, you also seem to be missing a lot of the Microsoft picture, and their ever present Antitrust behavior.

DoJ oversight is needed now more than ever, but it’s harder to track what Microsoft is doing per Antitrust as instead of directly destroying competitors they are doing so more indirectly. For example, they’ve been linked with causing/driving the sale of Novell – whether it goes back as far as the Elliott group or not remains to be seen. But then, we have the more out-front hijacking of Nokia by Microsoft via Elop, namely to get Nokia to use WP7 instead of MeeGo to replace Symbian with – so that SOMEONE would be using WP7; notice that Elop has already announced he will be leaving in 2012 once Nokia is sufficiently on the path to using WP7. There’s also the links to Turbo Hercules and its lawsuit against IBM; the whole SCO saga; destruction of Yahoo! to get Yahoo! to use Bing and kill its competitiveness in nearly any market; and much much more.

So the issue is not, does Microsoft still need oversight – they do. They’re playing hardball just as they always have; they’ve just changed their strategy in doing so.

Now as to Skype – I really do hope that the DoJ/FTC/etc will get in the way and not allow this deal to go through. Skype is on many platforms – Linux, Mac, iOS, Android, Windows and more. As a paying Skype customer, I am very concerned that Microsoft will drop – or at least severely diminish – their support for Linux and Android. And that is another direct anti-trust violation; if they do, I may switch to Google Voice any way.

What makes you think Microsoft would cripple Skype on Linux or Android, or even MacOS for that matter?

This is the same company that has built one of the very best iPad apps (Bing for iPad), rolling out a product that blows away anything they’ve done for Windows Phone.

Why would they cripple it and drive people to alternatives? (Might they improve it with a couple of Microsoft/Xbox/Kinect-only tweaks that only work through Windows? Maybe… but that’s hardly “crippling” anything…)

TemporalBeing
May 13, 2011 at 10:35 am

Why? To help keep people on Windows. Everything Microsoft does is around protecting its two mainstays of income – Windows and Office. If it doesn’t help protect that then they drop it. Perhaps the one exception that is Bing, which is primarily Microsoft trying to show they are still relevant.

BTW – Skype won’t work on Linux/Android, then it won’t work on Chrome, WebOS, MeeGo, etc. too. Less market for Microsoft to compete with, and (in their mind) reasons for people to get WP7 and Windows; at least until someone comes out with a Skype replacement that does it better than Skype.

Don’t get me wrong – Skype always treated every platform other than Windows as a second-class citizen. They do a great job of supporting Android, but that’s about their only other first-class supported platform. I’m just hoping it doesn’t get worse.

Of course, Microsoft could go a long way to proving people like me wrong on that by making Mac, Linux, Android, iOS, etc all first-class supported platforms along with Windows – e.g. every feature is supported on all platforms, and no porting it to .NET/Mono.

Peter
May 12, 2011 at 10:52 am

I would have guessed that it was Facebook bidding for Skype and not Google.

But Bob, if Google already decided not to buy Skype, then Microsoft should not have had to overpay for it. I can buy the argument that Microsoft thinks Google is wrong not to value Skype, but I can’t buy the argument that this was done to keep it out of Google’s hands. It’s pretty easy to keep something out of the hands of people who don’t want it, you shouldn’t have to overpay.

I agree, and believe it was Facebook (maybe in addition to Google, not rather than Google) that Microsoft wanted to preempt. Google already has VOIP and audio and video chat. They don’t need to vulnerable Skype architecture. The users, maybe, but Google (apps, Gmail, etc.) is already piling up users [in fact, I’d like to see a Venn diagram of Google and Skype users].

Facebook does not (currently) have a video chat system, although I think it could develop one for less than $8.5B. Again, I’d like to see a Venn diagram of FB/Skype users.

In either case, I appreciate this article’s insight, and I’m looking forward to seeing how this plays out.

David W.
May 12, 2011 at 11:27 am

Skype is old technology. The only interest Google would have in Skype is the user list. As Bob said, they’d all become Google Voice customers. Apple also has no interest in Skype. If you haven’t figured it out now, Apple isn’t dying to be “The Biggest”. Instead, they go for “Most Profitable” and “Best Run”. Apple has no interest in Skype’s user list. They’d rather work on FaceTime and leave out the phone stuff. They’ll build something cool, and get the Skype people “who matter”. Grandma can use Skype to call her grandkids. Her grandkids will text each other on their iPhones and use FaceTime.

Eight billion for Microsoft is pocket change. They probably found that in the couch cushions in Redmond. Microsoft needed Skype because Microsoft needs to do something drastic. They hope to integrate W7P, XBox, and maybe even Windows as a unified platform. They will still build clients for all other platforms because they have to. If they stopped supporting non-MS customers and machines, Skype people will all leave.

It will be interesting to see if this acquisition works out better than Danger did. Microsoft bought Danger because they had a neat product (Sidekick) that was popular with young people and they needed something to revive their WinMo platform.

Unfortunately, Danger didn’t survive long. Project Pink, WinMo, W7P, and all the other fiefdoms at Microsoft picked them apart. The phones had to be updated to use Windows technology. They couldn’t create a platform that would compete directly with Windows or WinMo. Now, the founders of Danger are working for Google, and Google didn’t have to pay a few billion for them.

My main concern is whether MS can allow Skype to thrive and grow without putting limits on them because some other part of Microsoft is trying to protect its turf. My belief is that Skype will slowly sink into oblivion as another failed MS acquisition.

Jim
May 12, 2011 at 1:43 pm

Danger didn’t die, it was bought, thoroughly mismanaged and dispersed. The Danger pieces are now self-aggregating within Google (Android reference hardware). Whether their output will ever migrate from demos and betas to actual products is yet to be determined.

Mr Windows
May 12, 2011 at 11:38 am

Microsoft needed Skype for their infrastructure, and the opportunity to add Skype services to XBOX Live, Lync, Outlook, Hotmail, etc.

But more importantly, they had billions and billions of dollars in cash sitting in Europe and Asia that they couldn’t repatriate to the US without incurring a tax penalty (stupid Congress), so Ballmer used some of this stranded cash to buy Skype. Now they have an asset on the books that they may be able to make some money on, it’s no longer underperforming assets. If you factor in the taxes they would have had to pay had they instead brought that cash back to the US, the real price for Skype ends up being around $5 billion. A bargain for what they have planned.

Ronc
May 12, 2011 at 1:33 pm

$5 billion is still too much for a company with $17 in annual revenue.

Mr. Windows, you are an idiot. “Stupid Congress”? So, a company hides money overseas to not pay taxes, and that’s Congress’ fauilt? And, instead of paying for taxes that might do things like fix bridges or pay down the debt, they are going to piss it away on a dying technology? Yeah, that makes sense.

Oh, and $5B is still 2.5x what eBay spun it out for, so they overpaid regardless.

Mr Windows
May 16, 2011 at 7:20 am

Yes, it is stupid because the money has already been taxed in the country it was earned. That’s why many big companies are balking at repatriating their profits from overseas instead of being able to bring them back and spend them in the U.S.
The profits have already been taxed and built bridges, etc. in the country where they were earned. If the companies were allowed to repatriate their earnings withour additional taxation like they used to, the economic impact here in the U.S. would be far greater than a one-time additional tax levy. Any money filtered through the government nets about 2-3x economic impact. Money that the private sector keeps and spends has about 7x impact. Which do you think would be better for our economy, stupid?

Tim K
May 12, 2011 at 12:44 pm

Well, I own an Ipod-Touch 4g. I also have a pre-paid phone. I have to do this because I move around alot, working overseas some, and so can’t guarantee I’ll be anywhere in the next two years (which means I can’t subscribe to anyone, anywhere).

My pre-paid phone runs me 10 cents a minute or more. So I use that as little as possible. For out bound calls, I get in a wifi environment and use my Ipod. If I use Skype it will cost me, I think, 3 cents a minute.

Now here’s the kicker. If I use Google Voice, it’s free. And I can use Google Voice on my Ipod by down loading an app called Talkatone that runs on top of google voice.

Talkatone+google voice function just like Skype for placing calls. So essentially I have the same functionality as Skype for free.

But there’s a catch – Talkatone’s quality isn’t always good, so when it’s poor, I then try Skype and usually that’s much better. (if that doesn’t work, I can still use the prepaid phone).

My big beef with Skype is that it doesn’t do push notification. So it can’t function as a phone on the Ipod Touch. Neither does the Talkatone+GoogleVoice app.

So, if MicroSoft puts push notification on the Skype mobile app, they’ll be eating into a lot of phone companies gravy – because at that point, you can get a mifi or Clear 4g and your ipod+touch will function just like a phone.

So, I’m expecting the first thing Microsoft does is put push notification on the Skype mobile app (if they can do this).

bradwww
May 12, 2011 at 4:55 pm

skype supports push – all you have to do is run it in background/multi-task mode and incoming calls and chats come right in no matter what you are doing. beware – this drains your battery twice as fast! thanks for the talkatone tip!

Tim Kane
May 13, 2011 at 8:12 am

With talkatone you must also down load google voice. Follow the instructions from Talkatone fairly closely, but it’s easy and works like a charm.

Brendan
May 12, 2011 at 1:20 pm

E-bay bought Skype in the belief that it could add synergy to their business. Microsoft may be hoping the same thing but that’s not the reason why they paid such big bucks.

Microsoft have a long history of using whatever means necessary to attack its competitors. In this case their target is not so much Google itself as Android. If Microsoft can’t make a success of Skype, at least they know now that Google can’t either, for example by integrating it in Android.

That’s exactly the same reason why it did a deal with Nokia to use WP7. Even if WP 7 fails disastrously it will have taken customers away from Android or some other rival OS, and at least delayed MS’s inevitable decay.

Nokia must be feeling really cheap (and stupid) now after selling out to Microsoft for about a billion dollars of investment. Their market cap value has dropped by far more than that since the WP7 deal. They should have known that when a giant company wants you for strategic reasons, you can sell out for a multiple of your value, not a fraction of it.

Why are you predicting such a dominant future for Apple? Most of the stuff I have read recently seems to think they will slip back into third place. I guess I am not unbiased in this because Apples’ business model scares me.

StChom
May 12, 2011 at 4:26 pm

Scared by a simple and frontal business model consisting in just trying to offer the best (albeit integrated/closed) experience at a premium price, for you to choose or not ?

And not by the one posing as “open” and who offers you to become a product, a customer paying to be himself sold around ?

Apple wants your money. Google wants your persona.

mbp
May 12, 2011 at 11:01 pm

Lol, I never said that Google doesn’t scare me too.

To be honest though Apple does scare me more. I think that a world dominated by Apple will stifle innovation far more than a world dominated by Google or Microsoft. Microsoft always inept enough that there was enough flaws in their business for others to sneak in with innovative products. Google themselves celebrate their many failures. Apple’s business model though seems to be about evangelism as much as about technology. When Apple was a minor player producing high end products that evangelism was tolerable. When Apple becomes the dominant player that evangelism becomes a bulwark against competitive innovation. At least Microsoft and Google customers realise when they are being screwed over. Apple customers seem blissfully ignorant of it.

StChom
May 13, 2011 at 1:13 am

I could see some sense into that, but Apple business model is precisely one that prevent them from “dominating the world”. Their ethos and egos are fine being the most profitable, and above all perceived as the most innovative model around. You don’t have to dominate the world in order to change it. I think Steve Jobs believes he proved that time and again.

It’s Google, the new Microsoft, which is all about domination. And it’s precisely a choice Microsoft made for them when they decided to go after them. The two started a race only one can win, it became vital, and the more as they are building their models around that race…

Apple is just on another realm. Racing with and onto itself, you know, that infinite loop. To me, on a more fragile ground. That’s why I don’t see how it could “win” on the two others. Nor why it would have to.

Very little has been said of Microsoft almost failed attempt at another version of Windows Mobile. Taken from the grave of the Kin phone, and thrust upon Nokia, surely it doesn’t have long to live? Would having Skype on Windows Mobile be the killer feature that Microsoft need?

However you look at it, you’ve got to wonder every time Balmer does a demo or talks to the press. He seems not to know a single thing about whichever subject is up for discussion. They’re doomed.

Marshall
May 12, 2011 at 4:15 pm

What did you mean when you said that “Apple will probably beat both Google and Microsoft”? Did you mean that Apple will ultimately make more money? Or did you mean that Apple will eventually dominate the markets where Google and Microsoft currently exist and hope to expand into?

Steve Dean
May 12, 2011 at 4:46 pm

Never owned a cell phone?? LOL!

Thinking
May 12, 2011 at 5:24 pm

Hey, I’m right here!

bradwww
May 12, 2011 at 4:47 pm

most seem to be missing the fact that Skype carries with it a significant cell phone architecture – Skype Phones are becoming quite popular in Hong Kong and other locations where using less bandwidth and saving money to talk a lot really make sense. Purchasing Skype seems like a natural extension to Windows phone in that context.

Stephen Johnson
May 12, 2011 at 5:12 pm

One way for MS to really take it to the cellular phone companies would be to put skype into a windows phone that does not have a subscription plan but allows you to buy pre-pay minutes and use skype via wi-fi to make calls.

Maybe next they will buy Clear and use that network as the basis for voice with wi-fi as an alternative.

MS gets the revenue and by-passes the cellular providers.

You’ve got to believe that Apple and Google also would love to by-pass the wireless providers, maybe this is the beginning of the end for the cellular providers?

Ronc
May 13, 2011 at 3:01 pm

The only way to by-pass the cellular providers is to become one. Anyone with enough money can choose to get into that business or not.

francis
May 12, 2011 at 5:30 pm

100% right Bob. This is less an initiative, than a paranoid, defensive move.

Happy Heyoka
May 12, 2011 at 6:46 pm

I don’t think it’s the client side that Microsoft are interested in… sure, they won’t be wanting to lose the existing users, but it’s the technology for the back-end and the brand that makes a difference.

All of my CTO friends have Skype on their handsets and PCs. All of my luddite friends have Skype on their handsets and PCs.

All of them are now, or will be soon, looking at buying their next round of VOIP services and outsourcing their PBX stuff to “cloud services”.

I know Microsoft have had telephony services in their suite for ages now – but they have never had much traction (every corporate install I’ve ever seen was Cisco or someone else); go ahead, Google for “pbx voip microsoft” and the first twenty hits are Microsoft sites or Microsoft PR pieces.

This might be a way for them to buy that all back, and changing the client side is not how they would do that…

Pratim
May 12, 2011 at 7:44 pm

Very interesting perspective…..i would agree that if google bought skype…it would turn into something grand.

In saying that, google hasn’t had much luck lately, canning several programs/products.

All 3 companies are very influential but it’s the users who ultimately hold the power.

Ed
May 12, 2011 at 8:40 pm

“tech savvy” never owned an Apple product or a cell phone and had a love affair with XP. This is satire. Cool. Keep on doing.

Robert, your mind is really sharp.
I’m not sure whether USD 8.5B are a real make-buy point for Google.
I mean, it’s a HUUUGE amount of money even if you take into account the resources it takes to conquer the VoIP market.
I really think that USD 8.5B is actually … a mistake. A Microsoft one. And a biiig one.

TW Andrews
May 13, 2011 at 8:59 am

I always think it’s interesting that Amazon is left out of discussions about major tech companies, particularly when part of the equation is content provision.

Never understood why anyone would buy an Apple product since it is a ‘user pays through the nose with money the user doesn’t have’ product.

I largely share the second commenter’s thoughts

God of Biscuits
May 14, 2011 at 3:05 pm

Demonstrate this to me.

With math. Show your work.

Bill James
May 13, 2011 at 11:52 pm

No doubt Google is the next Microsoft, but Apple transcending both? Sorry Bob, Apple is a niche. At the moment a very profitable niche which starts the great downhill slide when Jobs goes oars up. The ultimate end for Apple will be its brand name indiscriminately slapped on over priced shiny baubles hawked to narcissistic simpletons with above average degrees of disposable income, until ignominiously derided into the dustbins of history.

I disagree that the Skype acquisition opens up a new *market* for Microsoft. Skype is technology. The actual market is called “social network”, and Facebook is the big player there.

Facebook is the real winner. With their cooperation with Microsoft, they are essentially getting a big piece of the Skype cake for free.

Remember me, when you’re calling a friend next time using Skype, right from your Facebook profile page, not from your Windows desktop.

If there is one good motivation for Microsoft to buy Skype now, then to first of all tightly integrate it with Facebook, and later on to value this functionality when (again) attempting a Facebook takeover.

ashnyc
May 14, 2011 at 10:20 am

Do you think MSFT will come up with a full fledge skype smart phone. I think that will be a killer product. they should hook up with sprint or verison and just have a flat monthly fee for a skype phone.

MS will continue to buy new markets like this as people slowly realize there is no reason to buy a new version of Office every 3 years.

BKDad
May 14, 2011 at 12:22 pm

“Apple is not the next anything”

I disagree. Apple is the next Sony. Perhaps they didn’t start out that way with the Apple II, but they sure migrated there not terribly long after. Jobs has long been fascinated by the entire Sony culture under Akio Morita’s leadership.

It isn’t hard to imagine Apple as the company run by Morita-san’s adopted mentee. So much of the Apple culture has been adopted from Sony, but modernized and taken to a higher level. That’s quite an accomplishment for a company not in Japan.

Thinking
May 15, 2011 at 5:11 pm

Whoa Whoa Whoa. You are implying that Akio Morita at sometime had entered into a friendship with Jobs and up until this point in time I had never ever heard or read a statement to that effect in the English language.

A great many people admire Morita and have met him and many people honored Morita with awards. But to imply there was a deeper relationship between the two other than a few meetings as a business courtesy reveals a complete misunderstanding of the Japanese psyche. I frankly find the implication vulgar.

I did biographic research on Morita a few years back and never ran across mention of Steve Jobs in any capacity. If I am mistaken I take it back, but I don’t think I am.

As far as Apple being the next Sony, well, no. Morita and Masaru Ibuka were scientific as well as business geniuses. But that initial spark of creativity is done, likely never to be recreated. After WWII researchers, including Morita and Ibuka, brought the concepts of Einstein’s physics to the world in the form of devices that had only been dreamed of before they were born.

The next Sony will appear when gravity has been successfully integrated into the standard model of physics and then and only then will we see a period of truly new and unique creativity in electronics.

Hamranhansenhansen
May 15, 2011 at 11:16 pm

I think Jobs did meet Morita in the 80’s.

Jobs is also a design genius equivalent to Morita’s engineering genius, as well as a business genius. He had to develop his business genius over time. Jobs is first and foremost a product designer.

Your idea that Apple is not in the same league as Sony is ridiculous. Almost every computer in the world is a clone of either a Mac, an iPhone, or an iPad. Sony has been selling Mac clones for years and years.

The reason they are mentioned together is that originally, Sony did not want to do any product that they couldn’t do something original and unique with, that wasn’t the best in the world, and that is what Apple does today. Sony no longer does that. That is where “the next” comes in.

okonomiyaki3000
May 14, 2011 at 3:39 pm

This article is awful.

“In fact I’m fairly certain he felt that not buying could have doomed Microsoft.”

I can’t speak to what Ballmer felt but if he did, indeed, feel this way he should be fired immediately. (He should probably be fired regardless actually)

“t is no coincidence that Department of Justice oversight of Microsoft’s anti-trust consent decree ended this week”

Actually, it is the very definition of a coincidence.

“Microsoft bought Skype to keep Google from buying Skype.”

I don’t think Google had any interest at all in buying Skype at this time.

Michael
May 14, 2011 at 5:13 pm

People don’t think Google is a threat, but Microsoft is basically opening saying it is, because they know it is.

At a recent electronics expo Google also unveiled its plan to begin marketing its own brand of laptops with, you guessed it, an Android OS. No longer will Android be restricted to smaller less powerful devices. Instead they hope to win favor with the business and possibly even gaming industries.

Hamranhansenhansen
May 15, 2011 at 11:18 pm

I think you are confused. Google’s laptops run Chrome OS and are built by Samsung and Asus. Not Android.

Sujit Janardanan
May 14, 2011 at 9:06 pm

Interesting point of view. But doesn’t all these acquisitions end up as ‘money down the drain’ (also includes time and effort). Cases like Cisco-Flip, eBay-Skype and many others. Do investors in all these companies approve of these? If they do it amazes me.

Rk
May 15, 2011 at 5:28 am

My friend put forward a simple explanation : MS did it so that Google and Apple may not use Skype.

Thinking
May 15, 2011 at 8:08 am

Could MS be trying to resurrect the old dream of an internet enabled OS? All web services intermingled with the OS at a very low level. Maybe not for Windows 8 but what about for Windows 9? After all, Google came out with Chrome. With that development a new MS internet enabled OS could hardly be called a monopolistic practice.

Hamranhansenhansen
May 15, 2011 at 11:20 pm

Windows is already the most Internet enabled OS. The Internet is enabled to do anything they like with your Windows box: botnet, spyware, raid your bank account, take any file they want.

Alastair Sweeny
May 15, 2011 at 11:01 am

Very perceptive, but isn’t FaceTime Apple’s Skype?

Hamranhansenhansen
May 15, 2011 at 11:02 pm

Yes, FaceTime is Apple’s Skype. It’s only 11 months old, though, so it will be interesting to see how it evolves, especially after they publish the open specification. It’s made out of very standard parts that all mobiles already have on them, so it should be easy for other manufacturers to offer if they want to. It has the potential to be universal like WebKit and MPEG-4, both of which originate with Apple, and which benefit both Apple and the community in a similar way.

Since when was anything in the tech industry an end-game? And what would constitute an end-game anyway?

userulluipeste
May 16, 2011 at 4:01 am

Between two companies – when one buys the other one.

asmiller-ke6seh
May 16, 2011 at 8:23 am

Robert, I think that your analysis – vis a vis, MS buying SKYPE – is a great observation. I think it is consistent with Ballmer’s psyche and personality, as well as world view. It’s a huge waste of money – $8.5 billion as a blocking action is silly, especially because SKYPE technology isn’t that great, and because GOOGLE already has hundreds of millions of Google Voice customers to tap into, and millions and millions more who operate in Android smartphones — which makes it fairly easy for Google to do an end run on Skype and Micro$oft.

All that Ballmer has done is increased the bleeding as SKYPE’s value continues to dissapear down the drain.

Brett
May 15, 2011 at 11:57 am

I find it amusing that this guy never even insinuated Apple=Nontech… and so far 3 apple people have made the stretch and connected the dots for him…

Ted T.
May 15, 2011 at 2:57 pm

@Brett, go to a Ruby on Rails, or any other non-dinosour tech conference and count the the MacBookPros, then count all else put together.

Professional developers use Macs. Script kiddies in mom’s basement use PCs.

As to whether Apple will control the future — IMO all depends on the tablet market — and right now Microsoft isn’t even in the race, and Google is getting beaten, badly. Still, there are no guarantees for 5/10 years out.

I strongly agree with you assessment of MS’s current strategy agains GOOG as strongly as I believe it will only succeed in postponing the inevitable. I agree that whatever Apple’s vision, it will be far more grand and surprising than anything coming out of MS or GOOG. And, with this MacBookPro I finally graduate from mom’s basement.

Danny
May 15, 2011 at 10:21 pm

Ruby on Rails and script kiddies? Ah, yes, I remember 2006.

Aardvark Cheeselog
May 19, 2011 at 7:32 am

> Professional developers use Macs. Script kiddies in mom’s basement use PCs.

As a professional developer (i.e. a writer of software that people pay to use, from outfits like Citrix and Secure Computing) I just want to point out that this is an incredibly idiotic remark.

I took it to mean he feels GOOG and MS have territory to capture, but are racing towards an almost predictable end state. At some point they will reach an equilibrium. While Apple on the other hand is making up the game as it goes. It’s inventing new places to occupy since it’s most actively altering consumer perception of and behaviors surrounding tech. This is my own opinion, but I feel is also parallel with the author’s.

bonelyfish
May 15, 2011 at 6:33 pm

IMHO, Apple is really a different breed. It is rich enough and arrogant enough to be obssessed in becoming a product design giant than a computer giant. (Some people argue that Apple is money-hunger. I don’t think so. What it did was to keep its product to become cheap. Interestingly it rarely raises the price tag of the same product after each upgrade)

Hamranhansenhansen
May 15, 2011 at 9:33 pm

Apple already is bigger than anyone else. They are taking more than half the profits in PC’s, phones, media players, and tablets. Everybody else is sharing less than half the pie.

Cringely’s point is Apple is playing their own game. For example, the designers are the bosses at Apple, whereas at Microsoft and Google it is the engineers. One third of Apple’s employees are retail, versus almost none at Microsoft and none at Google. Apple is setup like a startup and is very lean, has very few products, each of which sell massive amounts. Microsoft is siloed and bloated, Google has dozens of products and only 1 makes money. Neither Microsoft or Google is set up in any way to compete with Apple.

Thomas
May 15, 2011 at 11:49 pm

Microsoft is probably mostly in the hands of Balmer – Business. And I’d claim Google is a business/engineer mix with a mission but no vision.

I just like to say if a company was truly led by a engineer it would be awesomer than Microsoft and probably Google too.

Apple isn’t going for install base, they focus on user experience and markup. This is why they concede the PC market share (they could have a Mac OS X light that works for x86 computers or 10 bucks a pop but they don’t want that market)

Frank
May 15, 2011 at 12:53 pm

It’s all timing, Apple may be on top at some time, but then people will go with another product that lets them do what they want, not what Steve Jobs wants and they will fall.

motionblurred
May 15, 2011 at 1:59 pm

If the iOS didn’t let users do what they want then why is the iPhone increasing its sales every year? Why do they line up for the iPad even when they knew what they were dealing with in the iPhone?

The truth is that people care far more about security, stability, reliability and customer support far more than they do about rooting their phone for free tethering.

There’s room enough for at least three OSes. Please stop making it about your hippie crusade for an openness that has never really existed in mobile products in the Patriot Act era.

I feel Apple (with or without Jobs) is more actively engaged in shaping our behaviors. This includes shaping our idea of what we can do with a device, how that device will augment our productivity and even what we should be expecting from consumer electronics.

Having come up in a DIY PC era building my own machines, at times tuning them beyond manufacturer’s published specs and exploring the notions of the computer as envisioned by the hardware hackers, it’s the past 9+ years building functionality into the web and picking up a macbook pro that has me becoming aware that there is a completely different way of conceptualizing about technology that Apple (and surely others) have been developing while we were looking at market share. The idea that tech should disappear, should get out of the user’s way and facilitate is counter to the very business model of MS and it’s Apple’s special sauce. Google has disrupted entire industries leveraging the profitability of it’s ad network, but it has yet to create a single one.

Hamranhansenhansen
May 15, 2011 at 9:44 pm

The reason iPhone is popular is it enables people to do what they want. For example, it is the only phone with a video editor. People want to edit video and upload to YouTube much, much, much more than they want to root their phone. People want protection from viruses more than they want an unrestricted app market, and iPhone has an unrestricted HTML5 platform, the best one on any device, so the managed nature of App Store and unmanaged HTML5 provide both alternatives.

You have to understand, for about 1 in 10 people, people who really know how to use a PC, iPad does less than a PC, but for the other 9 out of 10, iPad does more. Most people just use the Web browser on a PC, and whatever apps happen to be installed. On an iPad, they use the Web browser and they install dozens of powerful native C apps, they use it to read books, they use it as a GPS, they do more with it than with a PC. And it runs for twice as long or more on batteries, is less than half the size and weight, it is with them more, participating in their life more. It does MORE.

So if you are waiting for the great nerd revolution to come, I hope you have a comfortable chair and something to smoke, because nerds are a small minority of computer users now.

asmiller-ke6seh
May 16, 2011 at 7:09 am

Oh, you mean like Android and the Linux Open Source world — which looks an awful lot like the old PC/DOS vs. APPLE wars of the early days of personal comuting. Apple lost that battle back then. There’s something to be said about open architectures in both hardward and software. What could be a game changer is the nature of Open Source software vs. closed architectures.

Android is only an opening salvo. Some day we (well, not me because I won’t live long enough to see it happen) will see Open Source almost everything and anything.

This is the redmond mindset and it’sthe antithesis of the reality.. What apple does – and what infuriates some people – is give them products that do what they want. The twist is that people think they want one thing when they really want something else.

The ipad is a great example. It’s mainly a terminal on a media distribution network. It is mainly a passive object not an interactive productive computer. People will vociferously argue otherwise because they don’t want to think of themselves as passive consumers – but they’ll still buy it by the millions and passively consume. (One guy will write an essay on it and say there I told you so. well it has more power than a circa 90s supercomputer and you wrote an essay: Kudos.)

That’s part of why apple is so infuriating, and why I don’t believe they change people’s behavior so much as truly understand it and tailor their products to them.

The company who created Android was bough by google. In fact, Android was the name of the company. Go read up.

WaltFrench
May 15, 2011 at 5:30 pm

@Bob C, could you at least touch on why this wasn’t just Ballmer imitating being a CEO of a high-tech firm, making a strategic acquisition, blah blah just like the Nokia deal?

Microsoft’s most recent headlines in the phone space seem rudderless. (The Kin fiasco being most obviously so.)

But to your argument: I don’t get what benefit Google would get from buying a service that they already offer. $8.5 billion of shareholders’ cash is a lot for the 5 randomly-selected letters S-K-Y-P-E, and Google has plenty of NIH culture, to boot. Who says they’d have paid more than a few nickels for it?

In another year or so, this’ll look like Kin, I expect: no new features embedded in MS desktops. MS is more dependent on the carriers than even poor RIM and so is not going to use Skype to bludgeon the carriers closer to dumb pipedom (alas). And perhaps they’ll say they had to do it to keep it from Google, but it won’t matter: Google will be making more income off of Google voice and the shareholders will not understand what good it ever could have done for them.

Peppergrain
May 15, 2011 at 6:48 pm

I am tired of armchair quarterbacks who sit and predict the demise of Microsoft. It is silly to me that because there are two hot tech companies in the market that it automatically spells the death of Microsoft. Microsoft by the way is more than the PC, just like Apple is more than the iPhone, and Google is more than web search. Microsoft well positioned against both Apple and Google. Sure they need to execute, but Android has shown that the iPhone is not unassailable. All you need is good software, good hardware, and a determined wireless partner. In that sense the stars aligned for Google with the purchase of the Android software which it sprinkled with its popular services, the backing of a then drowning Motorola, and the desperation of a Verizon wireless, who backed Blackberry to avail and needed a plan B. The fact that Android tablets are floundering is no surprise. Android worked because of all the Google services backed into it, and it was good alternative programming for customers who could not get the iPhone. Too bad for Android that there are not such limitations with the iPad. All can get it no matter your wireless carrier. Microsoft has demonstrated with Kinect that it has the ability to develop future tech. Spend 30 minutes with Kinect and it blows away anything GOOG and AAPL has on the market. Once Microsoft completed the build out of WinPhone by further baking in its myriad of services, completes its feature stack, kick its hardware partnership into gear with Nokia, it’s Motorola in this sense, then we will have a level playing field. As for the tablet market, Microsoft is better equipped on this front than Google. Google’s tablet plan is to throw Android against the wall and hope it sticks. It’s not sticking. Microsoft deliberately took its time to build out its tablet future. Now of course at this late stage they will get no do-overs, but I fully expect great execution on this front. They will use their desktop leadership to build a compelling desktop and tablet hegemony that will be more deliberate than lucky. Stay tuned….in the meantime let’s stop all the non-sense about the death of a company that has grown revenues and profits every year since its founding. Microsoft is facing competition, not death..

Glenn M
May 18, 2011 at 9:59 pm

I like Android. I have an Android cell phone. Like it a lot. But the only reason I have it is that Apple hasn’t come out with an iPhone model for my cell phone company yet.

Bob
May 15, 2011 at 8:35 pm

“Apple is not the next anything because the role it aspires to transcends anything imaginable by Microsoft, ever.”

That is the most retarded thing I have read lately. It just stands out as obvious pandering.

Oh crap. I didn’t realize I was reading Cringely, the troll. Carry on.

Danny
May 15, 2011 at 9:29 pm

It is a seriously stupid statement. Apple is doing a superb job of doing executing things that computer guys have been talking about for the last 50 years. Try MobileMe again if you think everything they do is transcendent.

It is also laughable to read that google would “in one swoop” build skype perfectly into the “DNA” of Android. I like Android but absolutely nothing about it is built perfectly.

Hamranhansenhansen
May 15, 2011 at 10:00 pm

Cringely was talking about the role Apple aspires to, which is very, very clearly different from the role Microsoft aspires to. For example, there are Microsoft products that are very clearly clones of Apple products, but no Apple products that are clones of Microsoft products. Apple has passed up chances to be a monopoly, and that is what Microsoft lives for.

userulluipeste
May 16, 2011 at 5:05 am

That’s too bad, because they could have been getting some really good things from others. Their “total authenticity” policy (if there is such a thing) is a plain pain for customers accustomed to non-Apple architectures.

If you look at apple as a media distribution network your idea regarding monopoly is undermined. They certainly dominate (although admittedly don’t monopolize, but not for lack of trying.) music and TV streaming, and with every ipad sold dominate further.

DZ
May 23, 2011 at 1:58 am

A fair point, but the question is, was that their goal? Or is it their goal to just make money in new markets? Microsoft’s (and now Google’s) position seems to have always been to attempt to dominate a market, exclude its competition–through whatever means possible–and take over. They view all markets as a zero-sum game, where only one entity can make money, to the exclusion of all others.

Apple on the other hand has seemed content with making huge profits with smaller market share in various markets. That occasionally one of their products succeeds so well that it results in becoming a monopoly on a particular market, well that’s just icing on the cake.

The iTunes Music Store, the iPod, the iPhone, and now the iPad and the App Store, did not succeed by excluding competition, or by fighting a ruthless war against their competitors; they succeeded because they were clearly better products that attracted people willing to spend their money.

This is the argument that Cringely is making. Apple goes into a market with a clear vision of what they want: they want to sell hardware, and they do what they need to attract users to their platform. They sell hardware, and make money. There’s a tacit expectation that competitors will exist, so they just better start earlier, and ensure their products are attractive.

Microsoft and Google, on the other hand, see other enterprises making money on a particular market (social networking, VoIP, Web search, Web mail, etc.) and *they* want in. Then it’s a matter of devising how to enter the market in order to take over and take the spoils.

– Potential *partnership*, with telcos & wireless carriers, not substitution. Especially those that are skeptical about next-gen standards like IMS VoLTE and RCS.

Smartphones: yes, that’s important too. But remember that the current Google Voice model doesn’t really work well outside the US market, because numbering / interconnection works in a very different way.

Dean Bubley
Disruptive Analysis

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Here’s the thing: Nobody’s going to be sucking anything out of the telcos because the telcos, not Microsoft or Apple, own internet infrastructure, so all they need to do is throw some IP blocking software and that’ll be the end of that. Same goes for Facebook and Twitter.

Only Google owns internet infrastructure out of all of the above so it, not Microsoft, is the sole contender for taking telecom market share. For now.

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